"No attempt at pretence? What was your conduct last night if not pretence--maddening, infamous, insulting pretence?"
I knew her now. It was the handsome angry woman whose signals at the ball I had ignored--Paula Tueski. She had probably come to upbraid me for my coldness and neglect. "h.e.l.l holds no fury like a woman scorned," thought I; and this was a woman with a very generous capacity for rage. If she recognised me....
"Won"t you take off that thick veil, which prevents my seeing your very angry eyes. You know I always admire you in a pa.s.sion, Paula." I did not know how I ought to address her so I made the plunge with her Christian name.
"Why dared you insult me by not speaking to me at the ball last night?
Why dared you break your word? You pledged me your honour"--this with quite glorious scorn--"that you would introduce your impudent chit of a sister to me at the ball. And instead, my G.o.d, that I am alive to say it!--you dared to sit with her laughing, and jibing and flouting at me.
Pretending--you, you of all men on this earth--that you did not know me! Do you think I will endure that? Do you think----" Here rage choked her speech, and she ended in incoherency, half laugh, half sob, and all hysterical.
I was sorry she stopped at that point. The more she told me the easier would be my choice of policy. From what she said I gathered this was another of the pledges made under the fear of Devinsky"s sword.
"You know perfectly well that Olga is exceedingly difficult to coerce--
"Bah! Don"t talk to me of difficulties. You would be frightened by a fool"s bladder and call it difficulties. I suppose you shaved your beard and moustache because they were difficulties, eh? Difficulties, perhaps, in the way of getting out of Moscow unrecognised on the eve of a fight? You know what I mean, eh?"
For a moment I half thought she, or the police agents of her husband might have guessed the truth, and this made me hesitate in my reply.
"Did you think I was afraid to kill Major Devinsky, or ashamed to let it be known that I am the best swordsman in the regiment?"
"Why have you never told me that?" she cried with feminine inconsequence. "I don"t understand you, Alexis. You want me one day to get this man a.s.sa.s.sinated because you say you know he can run you through the body just as he pleases, and you promise me the friendship of your sister if I will do it; and yet the very next, you go out and meet him and he has not a chance with you. But why did you do it? I have heard of it all. Did you want to try me?"
I thanked her mentally for that cue.
"At all events two things are clear now," I said. "I did not want to get out of Moscow for fear of Devinsky, and you would not do that which I told you could alone save my life. You did not think my life worth saving." I spoke very coldly and deliberately.
"So that is it?" she cried, with a quick return of her rage. "You insult me before all Moscow because I will not be a murderess--your hired a.s.sa.s.sin."
It was an excellent situation. If I had devised it myself, I could not have arranged it more deftly, I thought.
I shrugged my shoulders and said nothing; but the silence and the gesture were more expressive than many words.
My visitor tore off the veil she had worn till now, and throwing herself into a chair looked at me as though trying to read my innermost thoughts: while I was trying to read hers and was more than half suspicious that she might see enough to let her jump at the truth.
But a rapid reflection shewed me I should be wise to use the means she herself had supplied, as an excuse for the change in me toward her. It was dangerous, of course, to set at defiance a woman of her manifest force of character and in her position; but in attempting to continue even an innocent intrigue with her there was equal danger.
She remained silent a long time, considering as it seemed to me, how she should prevent my breaking away from her. She was a clever woman, and now that the first outburst of emotion was over, she abandoned all hysterical display and resolved, as her words soon proved, to appeal to my fears rather than to any old love.
She laughed very softly and musically when she spoke next.
"So you think you can do as you will with me, Alexis?"
"On the contrary," I replied, quite as gently and with an answering smile. "I have no wish to have anything at all to do with you."
"Yet you loved me once," she murmured, the involuntary closing of her eyelids being the only sign of the pain my brutal words caused.
"The sweetest things in life are the memories of the past, Paula. If you really loved me as you said, it will be something for you to remember that while you prized my life, you held my love."
"A man would starve on the memory of yesterday"s dinner."
"True; or hope that somebody else will give him even a more satisfying meal."
"You could always turn a woman"s phrases, Alexis."
"And you a man"s head, Paula."
"Bah! I have not come here to cap phrases."
"Yet there can be little else than phrases between us for the future.
You have shewn me what store you set on my life."
"Did you think I could love you if you were such a coward that you dared not fight a duel?"
"You thought I dared not when you refused to help me."
"You said you dared not. But do you think I believed you? Could I believe so meanly of the man I loved?"
"You discussed the matter as if you believed it," said I; making a leap in the dark and blundering badly.
"Discussed it? What do you mean? With whom? Do you think I am mad?
I sat down at once and answered your mad letter in the only way it could be answered."
Great Heavens! I had apparently been fool enough in my desperate cowardice to actually write the proposal. The letter itself, if she dared to use it, spelt certain ruin.
"Well, you answered the test your own way, and...." I shrugged my shoulders as a suggestive end to the sentence.
She paused a moment looking thoughtfully at me. Then knitting her brows, she asked:
"What is the real meaning of this change, Alexis? Do try for once to be frank. You have always half a dozen secret meanings. You have boasted of this in regard to others--perhaps because you were afraid to do anything else."
"Are you a judge of my fears? I think I have already shewn you that that which I led you to believe frightened me most had in reality no terrors at all for me."
"One thing I know you are afraid of--to break with me." This came with a flash of impetuous anger, bursting out in spite of her efforts at self-restraint.
I smiled.
"We shall see. I have not broken with you. It is you who have broken with me. How often have you not sworn to me," I cried pa.s.sionately, making another shot--"that there was nothing upon this earth that you would not do if I only asked you? What value should I now set on a broken love-vow?"
"Had I thought you were even in danger, I would have dared even that, Alexis, dangerous and desperate as you know such a hazard must be."
She spoke now with a depth of tone that was eloquent of feeling. "What I told you is true--and you know it. There is nothing I will not do for you. Bid me do it now to shew you my earnestness. Shall I leave my husband?--I will do it. Shall I tell the world of Moscow the tale of my love?--I will do it. Nay, bid me strip myself and walk naked through the streets of the city, calling on your name and proclaiming my love--and I will do it with a smile, glorying in my shame because it brings you to me and me to you--never to part again."
This flood of pa.s.sion spoken with such earnestness as I had never heard from the lips of woman before was almost more than I could endure to hear without telling the truth to her. It abashed me, and the story of the deception I was practising on her rose to my lips: but before I could speak she had resumed, and her wonderful voice had a power such as I cannot describe. It seemed to compel sympathy; and as it became the vehicle for every varying phase of feeling it almost raised an echo of feeling in me.
"You don"t know the fire you have kindled; you don"t dream of its volcanic fierceness. I do not think I myself knew it until last night when you turned from me in silence and coldness, as though, my G.o.d! as though your lips had never rested on mine, or mine on yours, in pledge of delirious pa.s.sion. Ah me! You cannot act like this, Alexis. It was you who warmed into life the love that burns in me, and it is not yours to quench. You must not, cannot, aye--and dare not do it. You know this. Come, say that all this is just your pique, your temper, your whim, your test, your anything; and that all is still between us as it must always be--always, Alexis, always."
If I had been the man she thought I was, I cannot but believe she would have prevailed with me. The seductiveness of her manner, her absolute self abandonment, and the plain and unmistakable proof of her love, were enough to touch any man placed as he would have been.
But I had nothing to prompt my kinder impulses. She was only a stranger: infinitely beautiful, pa.s.sionate, and melting: but yet nothing more than a stranger. And I had no answering pa.s.sion to be fired by her glances, her pleas, and her love. She was a hindrance to me; and I was only conscious that I was in a way compelled to act the part of a cad in listening to her and cheating her. And I could only remain silent.
She read my silence for obstinacy, and then began to shew the nature of the power she held over me. I was glad of this; as it seemed to give me a sort of justification for my action. It was an attack; and I had to defend myself.